Residents from the birthplace of painter Gustave Courbet have joined with the French government to raise 4 million euros to buy back a painting depicting a local tree, reports The Daily Telegraph.
The purchase of the 1864 painting, “The Oak of Flagey,” from a Japanese collector emerged as unemployment rose to a 14-year high in France.
The masterpiece was unveiled to the public on March 10 at the Courbet Museum in the artist’s native town of Ornans, in eastern France. Now part of the museum’s permanent collection, it shows a large oak tree that once stood near Ornans in the village of Flagey.
The painting is important “because it’s a self-portrait,” explained Frédérique Thomas-Morin, the Courbet Museum curator. “It’s an oak rooted in the land, just like Courbet was,” she said.
Some 1,500 individuals participated in the purchase of the painting, with donations ranging from 5 euros to several thousand, reaching a total of 265,000 euros (£230,827).
The donations gathered during a time of rising unemployment went “above and beyond my expectations,” said Claude Jeannerot, a local socialist senator behind the initiative to acquire the painting.
Read more of this story from The Daily Telegraph.